Lagoa, the place to be
– December 9, 2022
Lagoa is hoping to attract a new wave of investors and residents after being named the “best municipality to live in Portugal” in a study carried out by the Institute of Behavioural Technology (INTEC).
The study, entitled ‘A Qualidade de Vida nos Melhores Municípios para Viver’ (Quality of Life in the Best Municipalities to Live), was open to all municipalities in Portugal that wanted to take part. The participating municipalities (22 in total) were then judged according to 10 categories: tourism; well-being; safety, diversity and tolerance; environment; economy and employment; education and training; identity, culture and leisure; mobility and road safety; health; and urbanism and housing.
These criteria were set as a way of determining “quality of life” in the same way as the World Health Organisation (WHO), which defines it as “an individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns”.
Lagoa received the highest score in three categories (‘Tourism’, ‘Wellbeing’ and ‘Safety, Diversity and Tolerance’), which secured first place for the Algarve borough ahead of Caminha, Bragança, Cascais and Pombal.
“Those who know Lagoa and who live here are well aware of the reasons that led to this accolade of best municipality to live in Portugal,” said Luís Encarnação, mayor of Lagoa. “However, this distinction is not a point of arrival, but a point of departure.” The mayor believes there is still “much to improve” in Lagoa and assured that the local authority will continue working towards making Lagoa a better place to live, work, study or visit.
These efforts will become all the more important as Luís Encarnação is expecting interest in Lagoa to grow following publication of this study. “Lagoa is already a highly sought-after borough for the purchase of first and second homes, and for being a territory with characteristics that set it apart from other municipalities,” said Encarnação. “However, I believe that more people will become interested in investing and living in the borough,” he added.
With the new attention that results from the study are expected to bring to Lagoa, we asked Luís Encarnação about some of the municipality’s biggest projects which have yet to move forward.
Ferragudo Marina – a project which has been in the pipeline for over 15 years – remains on the backburner but the outlook is brighter for Match Lagoa – a project to create a high-performance sports centre in Lagoa, complete with football pitches, a state-of-the-art fitness facility and rehabilitation and sports science areas and its own private hotel.
